


Awaken

by GalaxyAqua



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Gen, POV Second Person, Post-Despair, Spoilers, headcanon heavy, still kind of in despair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-01
Updated: 2015-04-01
Packaged: 2018-03-20 17:30:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3659004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GalaxyAqua/pseuds/GalaxyAqua
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you wake up, you feel as though you’ve wronged the world for simply existing.</p>
<p>A flood of memories – memories you shouldn’t have and memories that you should, mingled together like oil and water; separate but at the same time pressing to each other desperately – what you can forget and what you can’t becoming a raging storm in your mind. You’re confused about everything, at the burst of warmth in your hammering chest, and then at the long locks falling around your face when you finally sit up – black, brown, dull, and not the bright colors (red or pink, was it? God, you can’t even remember) you hated so much. Souda-centric, Post-SDR2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Awaken

**Author's Note:**

> Just drool, really. It goes on. Headcanon heavy with Post-SDR2 and despair!Souda. It really just goes on.
> 
> I might consider doing something like this for all the survivors (and comatose students even) but it depends on time, sooo...

When you wake up, you feel as though you’ve wronged the world for simply existing.

A flood of memories – memories you shouldn’t have and memories that you should, mingled together like oil and water; separate but at the same time pressing to each other desperately – what you can forget and what you can’t becoming a raging storm in your mind. You’re confused about everything, at the burst of warmth in your hammering chest, and then at the long locks falling around your face when you finally sit up – black, brown, dull, and not the bright colors (red or pink, was it? God, you can’t even remember) you hated so much.

You only briefly register your sight impairment when your head hits something above you, and you wince, but in your confusion only hit your head again.

A sigh emerges from your right, “So you’ve woken.” Then a soft but sweet murmur that doesn’t go undetected: “I hoped that you wouldn’t.”

You don’t reply. A swirl of satisfaction runs through you simply because she is sitting there; your princess, your beacon of light – the one with the perfect structure, precise step, golden hair and flawless joints and refined gestures and a smooth, untouchable sheen – and the hate, oh god, the hate from her you never thought you craved.

You think for a moment that Sonia would immediately stand and leave because that’s how you remembered her to be – cold and cruel and regal in her chillingly beautiful state of despair, but then your unwanted memories betray you and you think of the sun-glare of a tropical island and her sweet, delicate smile as she persisted in at least acknowledging you despite her apprehensive disposition and you feel the sting of tears. You don’t want to remember anything besides hate, you think, because you are not the weakling you used to be. Your sharp teeth pierce your bottom lip, and you taste a burst of copper.  

“Can you speak?” She asks eventually, opening whatever green-tinted prison you had landed yourself in and letting you sit up again, her blurry blonde (but still so gorgeous, so far beyond your reach) figure sharpening only barely as you blink your eyes twice.

“No,” you laugh drily, testing out your own voice. It’s perfect – perfectly detestable, and for a brief moment the tone you produce reminds you of wizard boy. Wizard boy, you think for a second, before shrugging it off as nothing.

Sonia rolls her eyes; though you can’t see it, you can feel the gesture in the air. Her pretty fingers lace together in her lap. “Do you remember your name?”

“I do,” you answer truthfully, but you don’t dare utter the syllables of it. “Do you remember yours?”

 She chuckles emptily, bringing a small hand to her lips. “You may address me as Your Majesty or Her Highness.” She sighs, after a pause. “But I’d prefer just Sonia, if that’s alright.”

You deign to call her Miss Sonia or Princess Sonia again, because Sonia still seems too impolite. It’s refreshing to be starting again with her though, and you wonder if anything has changed since you last saw each other.

“Where am I?” You ask, then you ask some more: “Why are you here? Where is Enoshima? Who is Hajime Hinata?”

Sonia only sighs again, and extends a cold hand towards you, effectively ignoring all your questions. “Take my hand. See if you can still walk.”

You feel a little indignant, being treated like a child, so against your will you ignore the alluring hand and try to haul your own way out of the pod. You fall to the ground with a graceless crash, taking cords and wires with you.

A coarse but familiar voice echoes from somewhere else in the room. “Is everything okay over there?!” It all but yells, and Sonia’s heavy sigh reminds you how much of a failure you are – and have always been.

“Everything is fine, Fuyuhiko.” She answers quietly, using the gangster’s first name to shut him up. You’re not jealous, you realize, and you suddenly wonder when it was that you stopped caring excessively for everything Sonia did – or if your heart had somehow lost itself in your whirlpool of confusing, contradicting memories.

A foot, probably belonging to the princess, nudges you gently from the side. You feel it is a restrained kick, but you’re not disappointed at her for pretending to be concerned. “Can you stand?” She asks, like a doctor would ask, like you weren’t really hurt anywhere and like she was about to send you home.

You try to stand, but your legs don’t move. “I guess not,” you say dejectedly, and thin arms reach out from behind you and haul you upright.

“There ya go.” The uncharacteristically soft voice of – was that Akane Owari? – Your supporting arms speaks up, and you shiver.

“Thanks.” You manage, unwilling to face the brokenness of someone you remembered to be so full of energy and vigor.

Somewhere in that time, Kuzuryuu had made his way to stand beside Sonia, and the two blonds eye you with scrutiny.   Suddenly, you feel cold.

Your clothes don’t fit you – you notice with bare interest. You occupy yourself with picking at the yellow seams, still in Owari’s weak hold, trying to remember why your clothes were so tight and torn, when you specifically bought it to be a few sizes bigger.

You’re still confused.

Kuzuryuu and Sonia begin to talk but you tune them out – no longer interested in what they had to say. You try to smile, but your face rejects your wishes and you feel like you’re grimacing at nothing. Your life, you begin to piece together, bit by bit, from the patches of memories manifesting in your mind.

You remember how you used to be.

You remember being torn – because you had wanted so badly to be talented, but when you were, you finally realised that being talented meant nothing if everyone else was talented too. You remember yourself when you were little, black-haired and bright-eyed and in love with machines – with their bolts and screws and their emotionless faces; you remember finally that they never judged you, laughed at you, hurt you.

You remember your glasses, the reason why you were so disoriented now was the lack of them after all, and the time you swapped them out for contact lenses because they were _cooler_ even if they made you uncomfortable. You remember crying a lot, the burning sensation at the edge of your eyes being familiar and welcome, because you let the tears fall so quickly and so easily when you were scared.

You remember that you were always scared.

You remember dying your hair pink because you hated that colour more than anything else in the world. You remember changing into everything you hated – because you could never see anything you liked in your reflection; not before, not after, not even now when you didn’t know what you had become – because you were so full of self-loathing that you changed in hopes that you could become someone that other people would appreciate.

You remember it mostly because you remember being amiable, and eager-to-please.

You remember hiding the bruises, tugging down your long sleeves, wearing down your cracked lips and looking at the mirror and crying because you couldn’t do anything but that.

You finally remember why, in that split moment earlier, you recalled ‘wizard boy’ as a being worthy of detesting. Not as much as yourself, of course, you were vain enough to hate yourself more than anything, but you hated _him_ in a more genuine kind of way.

He was confident, and sure of himself and awkward and shy but never, ever ready to please anyone other than himself. He was your polar opposite, because he embraced everything that you hated and he embraced everything that he himself hated – and mostly because he braved the world that you cowered away from.

You changed to please others, defying your entire being to fit into the horrible mold that was modern society.

He never changed to please anyone, regardless of all the ridicule he received – all the pitiful looks and unabashed staring.

With a startling clarity, you remember the moment when you started calling him by the name you felt suited him too much; ‘prince of darkness’. If Sonia was your princess, then, you mused lightly and slightly shamefully, he was your prince. Or, rather, they were prince and princess to each other, and you were just … trash, that they happened to chance upon.

You never figured out if he felt anything for Sonia like you did, and you suppose now you should’ve tried harder.

What hits you like a curve ball however, is the recollection of his death.

You break into a cold sweat, and the details come back to you, choking you almost as if he was right there in front of you with his hands around your neck. You remember.

And he had left you, bitter and resentful and in no way pleasantly acquainted with Sonia, alone.

You want to cry now, because you remember the way young Sonia cried in the Neo World Program, and you remember how much you hated him after being given a second chance – a second chance to do things right which had led to his death, to ensure you survived.

You remember now, another reason why he is (or was) your polar opposite.

He had cared.

For all the people who never gave him a second glance, for all the people who shunned him and talked about him, who avoided him and dismissed him as nothing other than light entertainment – he had cared. He had sacrificed himself, unknowing of who they were and what their relationship was with him, so that they could live on.

You want to laugh, because you could never be so selfless.

He was all vanity and all arrogance, and so were you, but the difference was clear.

_Why_ , you begin to ask _, are you so fixated on this fallen man?_

You’d think you were jealous, but you were not, because he is dead and you are alive and you hate, hate, _hate_ it.

You know he wouldn’t have had it any other way.

You had your machines – your cold, comforting machines – and you wished you could delete all semblance of human emotion from yourself so that you wouldn’t have to think so hard of all that you’ve lost and all that you’ll never have the chance to restore ever again.

Chiaki Nanami, you think.

You hated the way your brain stopped and started, but you were anxious, always anxious to care too much about everything and nothing at the same time. You think of the time when you went to a psychologist, and they had told you that you were depressed; you kind of disagree.

Chiaki Nanami, you wonder, where is she now?

Hajime Hinata, you continue to think, your – your soul friend – where is he now?

You have the gall to think about Nagito Komaeda right after the two you began to adore, and it throws you right off track.

Komaeda; a self-proclaimed ‘stepping stone’ for the so-called ‘Symbols of Hope’.

You remember two realities, a fork in the road of your history where your high school life long gone had split.

One reality you remember is the one where you had been in a class of 15, and Komaeda had simply been an admiring classmate who peppered everyone with questions daily and only slightly, admittedly a lot actually, been creeping you out.

The second reality you remember is the one in which Hajime Hinata held a bright shining torch in – where a mixed class of 15 plus him and his trademark spiky hair had been placed on an abandoned island and forced into a game of kill or be killed. You remember being more scared than you ever had in your life, and tying Komaeda up in chains with an accomplice – believing he was too dangerous – and thinking back, you should have tied him up for longer.

That’s when it finally hits you; the fact that you are a villain, an evil entity belonging to a group of pure insane individuals who survived what they shouldn’t have; the ‘Remnants of Despair’.

In remembering this, you remember Junko Enoshima – the most despair-inducing person you would have ever had the chance to meet.

Ah, that was the Enoshima you mentioned before.

Funny, you think, how you should really hate her for everything she did and has done and yet you feel nothing. Nothing towards her; nothing towards her strawberry-blonde hair and coy smile, nothing towards the red-tipped fingers and the icy blue eyes, nothing towards the girl who ruined – who _ruined_ your entire being, your entire life because you fell for her twisted heart so long ago – nothing.

That’s funny.

So you begin to laugh.

Sonia and Kuzuryuu and Akane all freeze at the sound of your laughter – freeze at the return of reality to your bones, to your racking sobs.

“Souda –” Kuzuryuu begins, but you slam a fist into the pod behind you and start away. You don’t want to talk to anyone right now.

“My apologies, but,” Sonia tries, but you brush past her, ignoring her voice which tightens with every syllable.

Akane, fortunately, chooses not to speak. She gives you a mischievous look when you lock eyes with her, but her thin lips only breathe a sigh and she rolls her eyes, gesturing for you to go where you need to go.

And you do.

* * *

 

When you say that you know where you want to go – where you need to go – you don’t, not really. You need to get away. You need to erase those faces from your mind, those faces of destruction and despair, so that you can relish in the manufactured awakening that you are more than you once were.

You were not part of Despair anymore.

It was all thanks to that brat from the Future Foundation, which you believe, despite his strengths and steadfast stream of hope, hope, hope – he’s flawed. What if he had been wrong about you? What if he only succeeded in returning Junko to her former glory and aided in the end (the true, bitter end) of the world?

Naegi wouldn’t have been able to live with himself.

You think, sometimes, that someone like Naegi should never have existed. The little boy aside – you say little but he’s probably just your age, only diminutive in a suit and in his big-eyed sweet-smiled glory – you are starting to think that maybe you can’t live with yourself, after all. You destroyed lives, and defied yourself; you were the murderer of many and the shredder of lost stories, unspoken words, and sweet, sweet innocence…

… you were an Executioner.

_He_ suddenly plagues your thoughts, a virus in the cavern of your brain signaling of a friend long gone, one you should remember laughing with and fooling around with, and you can only see his face and striking red hair; eyes screwed shut, teeth clenched and body writhing in agony as one million baseballs collided with him in the bitter irony Junko lavished in.

You executed him.

And once more, another, _a boy_ who helped you fulfill your dream of finally constructing a motorbike fit for death (though that admittedly was never your intention for the machine on its own) – a motorbike which lead him, and his poor screaming friend’s heart – to plunge to hell in a cage, the speed distorting his entire being and you remember enjoying it so much you cried.

You executed him.

Of course, you had been told to create executions for them all, and the _witch_ was no exception. You remembered that one particularly well because you had incorporated your imagination to the standard “Versailles’s Witch Hunt”; the twist and turn of her savior being her ultimate downfall, her poker face never once vanishing as if she had been a demon from hell; but no demon from hell could even begin to compare to Junko Enoshima, and all of you knew it.

You executed her.

Ah, the bulldozer. A reason for Enoshima to be disappointed with your efforts, you supposed, but she had given you a job you didn’t want and the bulldozer reflected the inner workings of your mind more than anything you had ever had the chance to tinker with, after all. You don’t think much of the laptop, because it didn’t hail the end, and because it saved Naegi – indirectly and miles away saving you. That laptop was the origin of Chiaki and for Hinata’s sake, you are at least somewhat grateful that it managed to survive.

You were the Executioner.

When all the events of the first Mutual Killing School Life return to you – full force and full of the regret you never felt, you think you know where you want to go. If you remembered correctly (and often you don’t, you figure, perhaps you’re turning into Komaeda with this one), the Future Foundation had told you that you were now on the true Jabberwock Island, and that the formation was the same as far as the Neo World Program had been.

You’re almost grateful, but you really aren’t.

You are almost itching to find your workstation, and it’s understandable that they’ve confiscated your screwdriver but you need it, you want it, with the longing that no one person should have for such an object and for you a person of such a caliber, but you can’t help it. It’s the only memory of your father you have left, the only one left intact, because all the others were lost in a vivacious frenzy of despair.

Well, you muse, when some more interesting memories begin popping up the more you dwell on your work as despair, not all of them.

You laugh a little to yourself, remembering Komaeda’s brilliant attempt at milkshakes when he was babysitting Junko’s little devil of a kid villain.

Monaka Towa was still alive, the last you heard, but you hoped you’d never have to see that creepy little girl again. But being an ex-member of Despair… you just hoped she’d never find you. That child had a few (okay, many) screws loose.

Not as much as Junko though, admittedly.

You come back to your senses when you realize you’re standing in front of a room, hand reaching for the door. It takes another second for you to peel your hand away from the wood to examine your fingers – painted red, like Junko’s, as if the mere memory didn’t threaten to send you into shock – but luckily, you breathe, it’s not a case of crazy Komaeda and Junko’s hand; you’ve merely painted it so and it seemed to have stayed. It smelled disgusting, so you don’t jump straight into your memories to find out what it is (and you think, maybe, you’d really rather not know).

Your eyes back on the door – hey, you think, feeling around your face, your glasses have somehow appeared on your face and you didn’t even notice, but you pin it on Owari who seemed to be giving you such a scheming smirk for that split second when you last saw her – you reach for the handle, muttering to yourself.

“It’s not like it’s going to get any worse.”

Famous last words.

The door catches you in the face, slamming your glasses into your nose and sending you reeling back. You take a moment to recover, before you direct your attention to what attacked you; and you’re immediately alarmed by the familiar face.

“Hinata?” You venture, openly gaping at the red-eyed, black-haired individual. Your gaze narrows, “Or… Izuru Kamukura…?”

“… Hinata.” He replies after a long moment, idly running his hands through his significantly longer hair. He mimes a cutting motion at the locks, and you at least try to shoot him a sympathetic look.

“Oh thank heavens.” You say, almost indifferently. “You look, uh, older. And. You found a, uh, new style, I see.”

A ghost of a smile plays on Hinata’s lips, as he nods his head towards you. “You too, Souda. Never thought I’d see you without the bubble-gum hair colour, but you proved me wrong.”

“Heh. Well, that’d be a first.”

Hinata rolls his eyes. “Welcome back… soul friend.”

You’re stunned into silence, because you’re torn between elation and bitter loathing at the term. You watch him with wide eyes and your hands dig into your side pockets almost painfully.

“Oh, come on.” Hinata goads, after seeing your expression. “I was waiting for you to wake up to say that. Don’t give me that look, idiot.”

You want to cry.

“Hinata…”

His red eyes blink owlishly at you, hardening by the second. You think he notices you leaning back – away from him – and he sighs.

“I’m still me.” He affirms. “Scary-looking, kinda, but still Hajime Hinata. Still Izuru Kamukura too, but that’s okay. He’s a part of me now too.”

“Do you regret it?” You blurt out, entirely out of context, and it takes a second for Hinata to figure out what you’re asking.

“If I didn’t, I’d be a monster.” He replies, a quick smile playing on his lips. “But we’re going to do things better. Make things right. That’s why Naegi gave us this chance. If we’re gonna die, we might as well die having done all we could to fix what we’ve done, right?”

You nod, ever so slowly, and Hinata’s hand meets your shoulder. “Hey, you’re a mechanic. You like fixing things, don’t you?”

You nod again, feeling the slow burn of hot tears falling from your eyes.

“Hey,” Hinata tries again. “You’re okay. You’re awake, Souda, we’re going to be okay.”

“I’m awake,” you choke up, unable to do anything but parrot your unfamiliar best friend. “We’re going to be okay.”


End file.
